


Retractable Claws

by stars_inthe_sky



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Wolverine (Comics), X-23 (Comic), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Character Study, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Missing Scene, Punching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stars_inthe_sky/pseuds/stars_inthe_sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some situations you just can't punch your way out of. Or: weapons, and when to put them away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retractable Claws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kvikindi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvikindi/gifts).



Laura still isn’t sure how she ended up on cat-sitting duty, especially when the cat’s owner’s life appears to be falling apart on the national news. She could probably use some assistance in person more than at her barely-used flat in the city.

On the other hand, Natasha doesn’t seem to need help in the punching category so much as the public-relations realm at the moment, and when it comes to putting on a good face for the media…well, Laura’s a much better cat-sitter.

It’s not as if she has anywhere else to be.

The thing she doesn't understand, though, is the concept of pets. Oh, there's the human desire to control, to own—that she's well-versed in. It's the question of why wild creatures would allow themselves to be tamed, generation after generation declawed and defanged and caged up, in exchange for what?

If Liho has the answer, she's not telling. Laura had seen a flicker of a black tail around a corner of the wall when she'd first arrived, but she hadn't seen the cat since.

Natasha’s apartment in Little Ukraine is unsurprisingly sparse and impersonal, but it's as good a place as any to crash for a day or two until Laura sorts herself out. There’s a computer that she manages to sign into as a guest, but then she just stares at the Google homepage for several minutes, trying to figure out what to type.

She already knows what the news will say: about a woman she had just begun to count as a friend, about a man she’d barely had as a father, about all the people who couldn’t save the people who saved everyone else. And what else would she do with a laptop? She’s no techie; there’s nothing she can do with a computer that might make a damn bit of different beyond the four walls of this building.

No, really, she just needs to hit something. She puts the computer away before she gets tempted to make “something” that.

“You’re not a blunt force object,” Natasha had told her, early on. Despite what those who would think to call her a friend might say, Laura Kinney feels like nothing so much as a weapon these days, albeit a poorly sheathed one.

She digs a punching bag out of Natasha’s closet and hangs it on a hook dangling from the ceiling. There are hand wraps coiled neatly on a shelf next to where the bag had been leaning, but, after a moment of consideration, she leaves them where they are. This is going to be bloody knuckles and bone bruises all the way, even if an accelerated healing factor will take some of the satisfaction out of that.

Laura has seen Jubes and some of the others work out and spar to music, but an artificial pulse and incoherent lyrics have never held any appeal for her. Bass lines only confuse her natural rhythms; the words laid over them are superficial babble to her uninterested ears. Maybe there’s another world where a weapon who is a woman—or vice versa—can get lost in someone else’s murmurs about love and sex and dancing, but this isn’t that world. Or, at least, she isn’t that woman or that weapon.

She can get lost in her own violence, though, and does. Her imagination is vivid enough to substitute any number of faces for the punching bag. Instead of letters emblazoned in white on black vinyl, she sees the Chaos thugs and the infuriating Frenchwoman from the casino. Abraham Cornelius and William Stryker. Fucking Anderson Cooper and those Avengers who will never fully understand what it is to be _made_ , to be _used_ , to be pointed at a target and have someone else pulling your trigger.

Laura isn’t aware that her claws have come out until she slices through the vinyl skin. Sand bursts out of the bag and pummels her in the face, and even then it takes several seconds before she notices. Spitting gravel out of her mouth, she steps back, trying to regulate her breathing as the pressure on the bag’s contents lessens and its expulsion dies down. Her claws slide back under her skin.

She reaches up to take the bag off of its hook, but the thing’s density is off now, and she gets knocked backwards with the weight of it as more sand spills out. Laura goes to find a broom and perhaps duct tape, but it seems Natasha’s apartment isn’t lived in enough for such things. And now there’s a mess and a burst seam, and this is one hell of a shitty favor she's doing for Natasha on Isaiah’s behalf.

Laura hits the bag again, sending another puff of sand to the floor and scraping her knuckles against the ragged edge of the vinyl. The skin on her fingers flares red with impact and irritation before just as quickly rippling back into the pale, unmarked flesh that hides her claws. She can feel them quivering like limbs, though, even under her skin.

Just then, the cat that Laura is supposed to be watching darts forth from wherever she’s been hiding for the past few hours and begins batting around the piles of sand, innocent as a new morning.

Laura yells a string of curses that Logan had taught her in French and Japanese before she cuts herself off midsentence. She doesn’t swear often, but the familiar Japanese words catch on her tongue, and the shape of her lips around them feels like being bitten.

The force of her anger and unacknowledged grief hit her in the gut, and she falls to her hands and knees as the curses die in her mouth. Logan had taught them to her. Logan, who is dead, whom no magic or mutation or sheer force of will could save, who hadn't been much of a father but who had tried, who'd probably have been able to find a way to laugh at Natasha’s predicament _and_ slash his way out of it.

She's never thought herself immune from emotions; Laura knows, most days, that beneath her monstrous abilities and the horrors of her upbringing there's some semblance of a person. But she cannot remember feeling a loss so keenly, so like a human and not like an animal. It's new, and awful, and she moans with the wave of pain that her meticulously engineered body can do nothing to stop.

Liho slinks over and sniffs her thumb. The creature probably means no harm, but Laura’s claws spring out on reflex anyway. The cat is out of the line of danger, fortunately, so at least Laura won't have to explain to the Black Widow how she came to kill her cat _and_ trash her living room.

And not for nothing is Liho the sometimes-pet of Natasha Romanoff, either. Laura watches the cat’s nostrils twitch, taking in the altered landscape of the floor and her clawed hand and everything around it with wide eyes. She wonders if Liho ever fears breathing in deeply, if a cat can comprehend the possibility that one moment of inhalation may be your last breath—or your last conscious one, at any rate.

The world is full of strange and terrifying things; this, too, is possible.

But Liho just breathes in and out like she has all of the time and not a care in the world, and after several long seconds of this, she begins licking Laura’s outer claw with gusto. Laura holds very still and stares; she knows exactly how sharp those blades are, and she doesn’t want to deal with a cat—or anyone—who’s bleeding from the mouth on her account.

After a minute or so, Liho seems to decide she doesn’t care for the taste of adamantium, and she wanders out of the room. Laura retracts her claws, dusts the sand off, and rises. She’s on the verge of having to decide what to do next when the cat reappears, leaping onto the windowsill and pawing at the closed window.

Liho looks pointedly at Laura with an unsubtle yowl, and she darts out into the dying light as soon as Laura cracks the window open just enough for her to wiggle through. This pet isn’t so tame, after all.

Laura closes the window and watches the city move toward sunset through the dusty pane. Then, she fishes some crumpled bills out of the depths of her duffel bag in the front hall and goes out to find a broom. She nods hello to Natasha’s neighbor in the hall, and even manages not to bleed or break anything along the way.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear recipient: I've never written Laura (or any non-MCU Marvel characters) before, but hopefully you like how we got along here! Happy Yuletide :)
> 
> Special thanks to beautiful and mysterious anhinga [stillscape](http://archiveofourown.org/users/stillscape), who betaed this despite zero familiarity with anyone involved.
> 
> Shout-outs also to [ilostmyshoe](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ilostmyshoe), [diaphenia](http://archiveofourown.org/users/diaphenia), and [throwingpens](http://archiveofourown.org/users/throwingpens) for keeping me sane on Sunday.


End file.
